A post should appear every Sunday

Sunday March 10th 2024

As I think I have mentioned before, the older she gets, the more vociferous Isis becomes. Her comments are restricted to the house, except for two moderately loud woofs when she perceives that someone has just walked on her run of pavement. Once she’s left what she perceives to be her territory, it is very rare indeed to hear a sound from her.

On the odd occasion, when she suspects someone is up to no good, for example if a person  is lurking behind a tree, she’ll give a couple of warning barks. But that’s it.

Indoors it’s a different matter. Her repertoire is huge.

There’s the low growl she uses to let me know I’m encroaching on her personal space while we’re resting on the daybed. As long as I immediately move whichever part of me is touching her, she leaves it at that. If I don’t take the hint, the growl volume is turned up, and usually accompanied by an irritable yip.

This, of course, is always a one way thing. She feels at liberty to plonk her bottom next to my head; to use my thighs as an anchor point  for her feet when she wants to propel herself towards the back of the bed; to dance up and down on my outstretched shins when she is excited, and to drop her head like a hairy brick, on my stomach if she feels a sudden surge of affection.

She growls in discomfort if the light’s on when she is trying to snooze. When we visit Jim today, he leaves his main light off in deference to her light challenges, but he leaves his table lamp on, so the ungrateful animal growls to herself until she falls asleep.

She growls and yips if I walk past her when she’s eating from the bowl in her stand, yet she allows me to place a bowl of fresh water in the stand, without a pause in her munching.

Last week I am grooming her, when she sets up a continual, low growl. Several times I pause to tell her that we don’t growl at Human when she’s brushing or combing us. Isis continues with her complaint, and after about ten minutes, I realise that I am sitting on her tail! (I apologise, of course.)

Perhaps she realises that I’m not doing it on purpose – but how could she know that? Perhaps she’s just being nice to me.

She is an exceptionally patient dog. Even if I’m late getting up in the morning, she waits quietly on the daybed until I come down and greet her. When I attempt to clip on her collar, she shows her excitement, shaking her head vigorously and bouncing up and down. When she does her morning stretch, her yawn often seagues into a truncated podengo howl: wawo00!

I’ve been giving her the green feeding maze several times a week.

For several years it had been buried under a large heap of miscellaneous objects, and I’d forgotten about it; nevertheless, she remembers something very important to a dog – if she becomes irritated with difficult to reach little treats, she must not growl or bark. If she does, Human will remove it.

She pokes her spotty nose between the plastic obstacles, patiently licking the treats out with her stretched out pink tongue, she pushes out the ones on the periphery of the maze with her nose, and the very hard to reach ones require digging out with a paw. Some of them are quite challenging, yet she persists until she’s claimed every one. And throughout all this activity, she utters not a single growl.

I’m amazed, and very impressed: after all that time, she remembers not to growl.

In the early days, she growled as soon as she began the challenge, and became more and more angry, working herself up into a rage, growling, snapping and barking, until I donned my leather anti-bite gauntlet, and removed the maze.

This happened every time I gave her the maze, until, eventually, I must have given up and abandoned it.

It was only a few weeks ago that I boasted about Isis’s speedy response to having her new harness put on, how quickly she responded to Human’s excellent training. I ought to know better by now. Anything imposed on Hairy One, whether it’s the path we take in the park, the quiet mealtimes, or brushing beneath her chin, is likely to be strongly resisted.

After a short period of angelically accepting the left foot through the loop routine, she decides that this is an ideal opportunity for stiffening her leg and diving to play bite my hand. Now, to be fair, she’s not drawn blood. She has left a dent or two though, and I know from experience that her playful excitement, if not confronted, will become more and more wild, until she will nip my hand.

I know, that on one or two occasions, I’ve taken my eye off the ball, and allowed a growl to pass unchecked. Now, after her harness has been popped over her hairy head – she doesn’t mind this at all – she growls fiercely as soon as I try to lift her foot to place it in the loop. She’s wagging her tail happily as she growls, even when the growl becomes a play snap. Before a play snap becomes a play nip, the growl has to be eliminated.

As soon as I touch her foot, I know what her reaction will be: if her foot is stiff, there’ll be growling. If it’s limp, we’ll be fine.

Today we have the most persistent resistance so far. Seven times I put her harness over her head, then reach for her foot. Seven times she resists, stiffening her foot, and growling fiercely. Seven times I remove her harness and drop it on the floor in front of her. I count ten and go through the process again. On the eighth attempt, her little foot is limp and relaxed, I pop it through the loop, and then she’s allowed to leap around and growl and yap while I fasten the clip.

She is unique among the dogs I’ve shared my life with.

That’s one way of putting it, anyway.

Isis came from Aeza cat and dog rescue in Aljezur, Portugal. For information about adopting an animal from the centre, contact kerry@azea.org or go to http://www.dogwatch.co.uk.